UltraViolet

Why Hollywood isn't afraid of Amazon's cloud

Amazon's new cloud service has generated a lot less angst in Hollywood than it has at the major music labels.

On Monday evening, Amazon announced the Cloud Drive, which enables users to upload e-books, songs, films, and any other digital media to Amazon's servers. Users can then access their content from any Web-connected devices. Among the major Internet companies delivering digital entertainment, Amazon is first to make good on the promise of ubiquitous access to content.

Amazon gave very little notice to the major film studios or record labels that it planned to handle their content this way, … Read more

Replacing DVD, a Hollywood cliffhanger

In a bid to sweeten the consumer appeal of a new digital format that could succeed the DVD, some at the major film studios want to prevent DVD libraries from being rendered obsolete in a format upgrade.

UltraViolet (UV) is the name of new technology standards expected to debut this summer that Hollywood hopes will help reignite the public's interest in collecting movies and cauterize the bleeding in their home-video divisions. UV was created by a consortium that includes all the big film studios--with the exception of Disney--and numerous movie-sector allies, such as Microsoft, Nokia, Sony, Comcast and Netflix. … Read more

HBO likely to clear way for cloud video, UltraViolet

LOS ANGELES--HBO won't stand in the way of cloud video or UltraViolet, the name given to technology standards that the film industry hopes will become a new home video format and a successor to the DVD, say multiple sources.

If you've ever wondered why some movies disappear from the video services of Apple, Amazon, and Netflix, the likely reason is the HBO blackout. When a new release is aired on HBO, often the company has acquired the exclusive right to distribute the movie electronically. That means the title must come down at other outlets, including Web stores. HBO … Read more

Will Hollywood's 'UltraViolet' plan replace the DVD?

A group of stakeholders in the entertainment industry are poised to make a important sales pitch to consumers concerning the way they buy and watch movies and TV shows.

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Netflix, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and Best Buy are among the members of a consortium called the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, or DECE, which has come up with a set of standards and specifications designed to make approved digital content playable on certified devices. DECE calls the technology UltraViolet.

DECE announced this evening at the 2011 CES in Las Vegas that it expects companies that have licensed UltraViolet to begin … Read more